


I can change you

by i_ship_chairphano



Category: Hunger Games - Fandom
Genre: Constructive Criticism Welcome, F/M, but fuck my brain right, cameron was supposed to be a lesbian at first, in which haymitch is kinda awkward around cameron, one of my first oc's, please be kind
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 07:19:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3601197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_ship_chairphano/pseuds/i_ship_chairphano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At some point in life everybody meets this one person that makes you question everything about yourself. So what if Haymitch met this person during the time in D-13? Everybody knows, Haymitch isn't the guy who makes friends but she's so completely unlike from everybody he'd ever met. And it's exactly this, that draws him to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. When things go down

**Author's Note:**

> This story started as a oneshot but then editing and whoops happened.  
> You can SKIP this chapter if you're here for the OC!! First chapter has no relevance for the story of the OC
> 
> ...constructive critisism is more than welcome!...
> 
> I'll also take suggestions and give credit of course...  
> [A fic for The last of us is also in progress but it's nowhere near good enough to be published so yeah...]

**When things go down**

He was running down the halls of District 13. His breath was cracking but he had to get to her before she would wake up and go berserk again. He had to explain what was going to happen to her and pretty much every other person in Panem. He had to explain to her, that she had to be The Mockingjay, that there was no other choice.  
When he finally reached the hospital he stopped a nurse who was quickly rushing through the halls to ask her where Katniss Everdeen is.   
"Umm she is in 427...I think.", the nurse answered before she continued running down the hall.

„423...424...425...426...427!“, Haymitch mumbled the numbers of the rooms to himself for some reason. He never mumbled.

He stopped in front of the door for a second to catch his breath. He didn’t want Katniss to see that he made any effort to come here. He didn’t want to give her any ideas.

Katniss was still asleep when he walked in. There was a chair beside her bed and a tablet with food on the table on the other side of the bed. Looking at the food he realized that he didn’t eat anything yet. For a second he considered eating the food but then decided against it because Katniss looked like she hadn´t eaten for days.

Haymitch sat down beside her bed and waited for her to wake up. After about ten minutes he laid his forehead on the edge of the mattress. He realized another thing, he wasn’t only hungry but tired. Really tired.

The withdrawal was taking its toll on him. He tried to steal medical alcohol once but one of the nurses caught him. The nurse who caught him was more than just angry; she tried to explain to him that he’d be dead if he drank the alcohol.

That was about a week ago now.

A small moan caught his attention. He quickly sat straight up, trying to hide how tired he was. She was already so broken and Haymitch didn’t want to give her another reason to worry. Even though she made it look like she hated him for everything he’d done, deep inside he knew that she cared about him. Maybe not much but she did.

Katniss opened her eyes and immediately closed them when she noticed his presence.

“What…”, she croaked. Her voice sounded horribly damaged. No wonder after all the screaming. He regretted some of the things he called her. It wasn’t fair to insult her after everything she went through.

She took a deep breath and tried again.

“What are…”, she coughed but continued to talk. “are you doing here?”, the way she looked at him made clear that he wasn’t welcome.

He sighted and prepared himself for some various insults. But there came none. Haymitch waited another minute to respond, giving her the time to decide whether she wanted to hear what he had to say or not.

When she didn’t answer he spoke.

“Listen we need to clear things out between us. For the sake of the boy.”, he spoke quietly, trying not to make her angry. He knew that his pure presence was annoying her.

“ _The boy_ has a name you know.”, she fired at him.

“I know…sorry.”, he took a deep breath before talking again. “You know…you have to play your role as the Mockingjay. There is no way around.”, Haymitch took a break to give her time to respond.

“Leave me alone.”, she turned her head away from him.

“Katniss…there is no other choice. If you want to save those people out there in the districts, your loved ones…Peeta, then you have to play along.”, he tried to explain it the easiest way possible, but really there was easy way to explain to a 17 year old girl, that she has to play the figure of hope for millions of desperate people, in a war that could be lost so easily.

“Leave. Me. Alone.”, she wasn’t in the mood for this Mockingjay bullshit. Not now, not ever again. She just wanted Haymitch to leave her alone. There was nothing she wanted to talk to him about. He lied to her, he betrayed her. He left Peeta alone.

“You just don’t get it do you?”, he was getting pissed. “This is not about you anymore! How can a person be so selfish?”, he knew she wasn’t selfish. She was probably the most selfless person he ever met. She cared for her mother and her little sister for years all by herself, she went into the games two times to save her sister and Peeta. She gave herself up to save her loved ones.

But he needed her to snap like she did when she volunteered for her sister, like she did when she realized what she had to do in order to save Peeta in their first games. He needed her to understand that she was the only one able to give the people out there in the districts hope.

Katniss squeezed her eyes shut, still not willing to even look at him.

“Sweetheart, these people count on their Mockingjay.”, he grabbed her hand and planted a small kiss on it. “We all do, you know?”, he then left her alone.

After Haymitch had closed the door, Katniss opened her eyes and stared into nothingness. She knew that so, so many people were counting on her and that he didn’t actually meant what he said about her being selfish. He was trying to motivate her in his Haymitch-like way. The only thing that didn’t fit into what just happened was the way he’d kissed her hand.

Kissing someone’s hand, or hugging, or body contact in general wasn’t Haymitch’s thing at all. It made her uncomfortable because if somebody like him was resorting to such means to convince her of being the Mockingjay, then it was about to go deep downwards.

 

 


	2. Is nerd really still a thing?

**Is nerd really still a thing?**

 

Haymitch was the last one sitting in the conference room. Everyone else had left to comply with their duties.

So now here he was…exhausted and alone. He wondered if he should go to Katniss but he didn’t know what to talk about. She still hated him anyway. He knew he should apologize to her, but apologizing wasn’t a part of him. He’d never apologized for anything in his life. It was probably one of the reasons why no one wanted to befriend with him.

Suddenly the door opened behind him and a young woman walked in. He turned around and looked at her without saying anything, just raising his eyebrows at her sight. She didn’t look like someone from District 13 at all. Her clothes slightly reminded of the boring, grey uniform that every citizen from 13 had to wear. She’d cut off the sleeves of her pullover and was wearing shoes that obviously didn’t come from here. She had short blond hair, about as long as Haymitch’s.

“Oh…I didn’t know here was a meeting.”, she said, obviously confused by Haymitch’s presence.

“Umm, no the meeting is over. I’m just…uh…actually I don’t really know what I’m doing here.”, he said, feeling a smile creep onto is face. Smiling was one of the things that didn’t belong to him, just like apologizing.

Suddenly he started to consider her.

“And what exactly are you doing in here?”, he asked, a suspicious tone in his voice.

“Woah hey, I’m just doing my work here.”, she laughed, “I’m here to fix the computers. If you were part of the meeting, then you should’ve realized that it wasn’t doing shit.”, she answered still smiling.

“Oh…sorry then.”, suddenly he got that weird feeling that he’d met her before.

“Do we know each other?”, he asked her, looking her up and down while she walked around the table to the Computers.

“I’m from D-3. My older sister volunteered for me in the 70th. I was on TV one time.”, she said.

Haymitch tried to remember the tributes from District 3 in the 70th games. He had a faint memory of a 17 year old girl who made it under the last 8. That was pretty good for someone who wasn’t a career.

“Yeah…she made it under the last 8 right?”, he wanted to make sure that he was remembering correctly for some reason. Usually he wouldn’t give a damn about something like this.

“Right. That guy from 2 killed her with an axe.”, she said, looking to the ground. Haymitch felt bad for bringing up that topic.

“I’m Haymitch, I won the second Quarter Quell. I’m the guy who let the Mockingjay lose you could say.”, he looked down to his lap where one of his hands was fumbling with a pen and smiled at his statement.

“I know who you are. Who wouldn’t, I mean you had some pretty funny appearances on TV.”, she laughed at him, then turned around to begin with her work. Haymitch’s smile grew wider at her implications.

_‘What the hell? Stop smiling like a drunk idiot!’_ he thought to himself.

“Yeah…as a victor you constantly have to entertain the people, y’know? That’s the payback for beating the game.”, he still wasn’t looking at her.

“I guess so.”, she answered, while typing something into the computer.

“I’m Cameron by the way. I work a few levels further down with Beetee, or more like I work for Beetee. I’m the one who programmed the system for the last arena. You know…when which part of the clock is active and for how long and where and all that stuff.”, she said while waving with her hand in the air.

Haymitch looked up and watched her for a few seconds. Judging by the way she modified the District-13 uniform, so that it didn’t look like the uniform at all and by her appearance in general she couldn’t be much older than 20.

“So you work down where all the other nerds at?”, for some reason he was interested in who she was. She was good looking and seemed to be clever, after what she told him about her at least.

She abruptly turned around to face him and stared at him like she just saw a ghost.

“What?”, Haymitch sounded way more aggressive than he intended to.

She then burst out laughing. She laughed so genuine that his heart skipped a beat. He couldn’t remember making a woman laugh like this ever before.

“Man, I didn’t know “Nerd” was still a thing. You really gotta be old!”, she laughed while leaning against the desk.

“Woah…you’re gonna pay sometime for calling me old.”, he said pretending to be hurt by her words. It startled him how open she talked to him, even though she didn’t know him. He smiled once again.

“Oh yeah? And how exactly am I gonna pay?”, there was nothing seductive in her voice and there weren’t any hidden implications but Haymitch still felt the need to take her some place a bit more private than this conference room. He felt a really weird affection to her even though he only knew her for about two minutes now. She managed to do something to him, no one else managed in about 26 years now. She made him smile and feel not as empty as usual. She talked to him in a way that no one else does.

_‘Don’t get any ideas Abernathy. She’s like 20 and you know her for about two minutes. She’s just being nice because she doesn’t know you.’_ Haymitch thought to himself.

“How about you and I go drink something when this whole thing here is over?”, he responded without really thinking about it.

_‘Dammit! Shut the fuck up you idiot!’_

“So first of all, IF this whole thing here comes to an end and second, why the hell not? Not like I’ve got any plans for after the war.”, she said, still typing. “Or…you know we could just go eat lunch together. But I have to warn you, the dogs will eat you alive if you try anything.”,

_‘How can a person possibly smile that much in a place like this?’_ Haymitch thought to himself while deciding whether this was a good idea or not.

“The dogs?”, he asked only to keep this conversation going.

“Oh the dogs are like…my guys, my team you know? They’re the guys that more or less work for me…do all the dirty work like decoding and all that stuff so we can stream our propos on Capitol TV.”, she said, again waving her hand in the air.

Haymitch noted that. He assumed she did this when she explained something.

He wanted to ask her about how she ended up with the rebels but he instead decided that he could ask her about that while having lunch.

“If you want to eat lunch you better hurry up.”, he said.

“Almost done…”, she mumbled, frantically typing.

While Cameron finished her work, Haymitch stoop up and collected his papers. When he finished he leaned against the doorframe, waiting for her.

He watched her doing her work. Just when she turned around to face him, he realized that he in fact was checking her out. She raised one eyebrow at him and laid her head skew like a dog would do when it heard a suspicious noise.

“My pants are pretty awesome, huh?”, she said while walking over to him. She then leaned closer to him and said: “Though, I doubt they would suit you.”

He rolled his eyes and chuckled, closing the door behind them.

 


End file.
